


Sweetest Downfall

by procnesflight



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Author is Bitter, Blanket Permission, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pining, Sad Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 03:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18651643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procnesflight/pseuds/procnesflight
Summary: Until he got the serum, Steve had never seen his mark before.  It was a vibrant red - like blood or apples or anything else that only looked dirty yellow to Steve's eyes.aka i wrote a soulmark au in a day because i was feeling sad





	Sweetest Downfall

**Author's Note:**

> This is a non-commercial work of fanfiction. The characters and setting of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are sole invention of Marvel Comics and property of Marvel Studios. 
> 
> title comes from Samson by Regina Spektor. the fic comes from me hearing the endgame ending and being very bitter and angry before writing this out of sadness and spite. 
> 
> thank you so much to my betas james (@safiyahsohial) and ciena (@zombiecap)
> 
>  
> 
> cw for descriptions of blood, death, and grief. 
> 
> if you want to know the mcd see the end notes.

Until he got the serum, Steve had never seen his mark before.  He had peered over his back and set up mirrors to reflect back on each other, asked Ma to describe it, pestered Bucky to trace it with old newspaper and a pen.  It was a vibrant red - like blood or apples or anything else that only looked dirty yellow to Steve's eyes. 

 

Ma thought it was an abstract butterfly - proof that Steve would be a great artist.  Bucky liked to pretend it changed its amorphous shape when no one was looking. One day it could be a boat sailing away and the next two people under a tree.  Or a squashed piece of fruit whenever Steve and Bucky were feuding. Steve always thought it looked like an old bruise.

 

When he stepped out of the chamber, with his body alight with strange energy his eyes first landed on Agent Carter standing dead in front of him.  Her eyes were wide open with shock, her hair caught the cold light of the laboratory and turned it into something warm and soft, and her lips - her lips were soft and red, bright red, just like he had been told his mark was.  

 

_ If she should kiss it, no one would be able to tell where her mark ended and mine began. _

 

She reached out, as if to touch his heart and a screeching bullet went by.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


With Bucky beside him, Steve watched as Shmidt peeled off his own face.  The mangled flesh glistened as he held it up over the walkway.

 

_ We have left humanity behind. _

 

He threw it over the edge and as it burned Steve’s back itched.  Was this his fate? To become a monster who could flay himself and feel no pain?  Would Steve’s mark fall off?

 

Perhaps it would be better to burn here before his own body could revolt against him, but before he consider this Bucky’s frantic  _ Not without you _ pierced through the air.  Perhaps Steve should die here, but not with Bucky watching.  Not with Bucky, who would jump after him, standing on the other side.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The ice isn’t red, but it burns his eyes all the same.  Rushing closer and taking up all of his vision, it presses back against him, tries to eject him into the sky, the glare of it blinds him and he pulls an arm back to shield his vision and he -

  
  


* * *

  
  


Wakes up in a room that smells nothing like New York, and an old baseball game is playing, and the nurses hair is red, deep red, dark enough that it would clash against his mark.

 

And everything is  _ so wrong _ and he runs as far away as he can but it’s still all wrong and loud and it hurts -

 

Coca-cola advertisements are everywhere, and the red of their bottles scream at him.  He buys a can at a bodega and it’s not the same. He was lucky to be found by people friendly to America.  He was lucky to be found at all. He is lucky to be alive. Lucky to be able to live during the gift that is the 21st century.  Red lacy bras adorn women in huge billboards. The model is an “angel” and married. Her abs are better defined than his. Hamburgers and headphones and cigarettes and mayonnaise and shoes and everything is all red.  

  
  


* * *

  
  


He puts on his bright red costume and fights aliens and wonders if this was his destiny.  To have everything he has ever wanted in Captain America and to lose everything else in the fallout.  

 

He rides across the country and goes to every Howling Commando’s grave to place down a rose.  None of them are near each other. In facing death they were brothers, and apparently in life they became drifting strangers.  Monty and Dernier are buried across the sea so he uses a website to deliver flowers for him. Back in Brooklyn Steve leaves nothing at the grave marked  _ James Barnes 1917 - 1945 _ .  There is no body under the dirt and stone, so Steve cannot see why he should place a rose here.  

 

It all seems insignificant suddenly.  Why cut a living rose just to condemn it to die in a place full of dead things?  All of Steve’s brothers have been gone for years now, and Bucky died screaming out.  What will a rose do to ease the ache Bucky must have felt as he died?

  
  


* * *

  
  


He moves to DC because Natasha suggests it and he knows enough to realize that it’s really Fury ordering it.  

 

Her hair is red, but it’s all wrong, sometimes he allows himself a silly fantasy where he isn’t alone, and her hair color doesn’t shift tones every month or so.  Where they work missions together and come home together and stay together. Her hair would be a bright banner that would never change and be living proof that Steve wasn’t alone. 

 

It’s stupid to get invested in a future he isn’t sure he even wants, and that he knows is impossible, but Steve takes solace where he can these days.  And if that happens to be in the hair-dye of a spy who is most likely reporting on Steve’s health, well, at least she doesn’t know about this. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Winter Soldier is deadly, more so than any other person he has had to fight this century.  The red goggles strapped across his face are cracked and the mask over his mouth and nose is matte black, flattening his face and making it blend in with the rest of his body.  He looks even more disturbing than the aliens he fought in New York, perhaps because of how human he seems to be underneath all the layers of kevlar and leather and weaponry. He looks like a disfigured beetle.  Steve grabs him by his neck and flips him, the goggles fall off his face and Steve sees blue

 

The Winter Soldier slowly raises his hand to his brow, as if to make sure that it hasn't detached with his goggles.  He glares at Steve. Sam flies in from nowhere and kicks him over. Natasha manages to shoot him in the knee and thigh as he struggles to stand up.  Steve throws his shield and can see the Soldier’s chest dent inwards at the impact. He twists as he falls; chest to the ground, face tilted to the side - the mask half detached from the force of Sam’s kick - legs in a tangled mess.  Steve walks over to make sure that the Winter Soldier won’t be coming after them. 

 

The chin is covered in stubble, but it doesn't hide the slight cleft on the point of it.  His lips are chapped but a familiar pink. Steve can’t feel his fingertips as he checks for a pulse.  He tilts the Soldier’s head, and his chest creaks and flops over, so the Winter Soldier is all laid out under the sun.  

 

Steve knows this face.  That nose, those cheekbones, abraded and black with grit from the road.  Those  _ eyes  _ \- how didn’t he see?  His gaze travels downwards.  Bucky is bundled thick with gear but he knows the slump of those shoulders.  The metal arm is splayed out, like he was in the middle of some movement -  _ catching a ball that comes sailing in from high above - tossing his arm over a skinny shoulder - spinning a girl round and round and - _

 

It’s hard to see against the black of his jacket but dark blood is spilling from where Steve’s shield cleaved into him.

 

The blood.  It. It’s almost too dark to see.  In forms an almost perfectly symmetrical shape.  But it's too dark to see. He pushes the body away.

 

What are Sam and Natasha yelling? He can't hear them, he has to  _ see.   _ The road where he fell shines the mark better.  

 

_ A butterfly, my boy, a beautiful butterfly gliding up and away on a breeze. _

 

It's so large, and so red.

 

_ A huge boat, to carry a hoard of pirates.  The jolly Rogers! Come to take gold and rum and uh… a map to Atlantis! _

 

Oh, so this is how it was always meant to be.

 

_ A mushy tomato, Steve!  That was old and rotting and so it was thrown out and stepped on! _

 

Bucky, Bucky forgive him.

 

_ Two people, they’re having a picnic underneath an apple tree.  They love each other. See, they could be holding hands. And the leaves are falling around them. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


He can’t remember getting handcuffed, or led to the back of a van.  Natasha is hurt, he knows. Sam is worried with both of them. He can't see anything beyond his mark spilled all over the pavement.  As he was being pushed backwards two men came and picked up Bucky. Was it just his head lolling as he was lifted? Steve thinks he might be going crazy.  Bucky appearing in the body of a ghost, his own mark being spilled upon the ground, the slightest twitch in the neck muscles of a man twice dead. 

 

Sam says something and then one of their guards tazes the other.  

**Author's Note:**

> bucky dies before his mask falls off in the highway fight in catws


End file.
